I’ve got a Samsung ML-1610 laser printer, which is a great value solid little laser printer (it was around fifty quid IIRC). Samsung even supply Linux drivers for it, which is great. However, their drivers use a GUI installer, which isn’t a lot of use if the box you’re connecting the printer to doesn’t run X (i.e. it’s a server).

For my future reference, and for anyone else who finds it useful, simple steps to get it working (for CUPS):

1. Grab the drivers from Samsung: ML1610 drivers page
2. Untar them (tar xzvf 20070425130454000_UnifiedLinuxDriver.tar.gz)
3. They’re in a directory called cdroot (great choice of name, eh?)
4. Copy the PPD files to the right place:
   
sudo cp ./cdroot/Linux/noarch/at_opt/share/ppd/ML-1610spl2.ppd /usr/share/ppd

5. Copy the filters to the right place:
   
sudo cp ./cdroot/Linux/i386/at_root/usr/lib/cups/filter/rastertosamsung* /usr/lib/cups/filter/

6. Restart cupsd (killall -HUP cupsd ought to do it) then go through the normal “Add Printer” steps in the cups web interface, and, hopefully, Robert should be your mother’s brother.

Note – paths may vary on your system. If so, set LogLevel debug in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf, then watch the cups error log (/var/log/cups/error_log) whilst printing test pages to see what’s going wrong.

Good luck! :)